Thursday, 17 April 2014

So You Think You Can English?

And then i heard my grandson say "Let's eat grandpa!" I was in a wonder on what exactly does he mean? Cannibalism? Does he wants to eat me? Then I figured out what he actually meant "Let's eat, grandpa".
Ha! An old story showing how a sentence can have two meanings. So what do you think? Is English difficult or simple? Let's debate!!
Debates are something which many people eagerly awaits. All they need is a spark and they are all ready to turn on the heat. It's a platform for everyone to show off their knowledge. Whether It's a classroom debate over favourite sport or friendly banter of SRK and Salman fanatics, debates always consist of a healthy argument with logical reasoning from both the sides.
Well, I know the debate in trend these days are BJP vs Congress vs Arite IPL team. But the debate I'm going to mention is a very common one and you must have seen in your school days in your english class. "Whether english is simple or not". Though almost every teacher or professor would say English is the easiest of all languages, students would surely disagree and keep an opposite view.
Many views have been made by many people and everything seems to be logical. So for the sake of debating let's assume two groups. One with Scholars, teachers and the Nazis, the other of students frustrated by studying English year after year. So just pick a side and get started.

"English is a simple language", Says the teachers "Compared to Chinese with around 50,000 alphabets or Tamil with 247 alphabets, English has only 26. They can very easily be remembered and learning English is very benefecial. It helps a lot in life as it is considered the common language of the world. It's the second most spoken language in the world."
But then students roar and the frustration comes out.

"English is a strange language. Polish is something applied to shoes and people from Poland are also Polish. When pronounced 'to' should it be written 'two' ' to' or 'too'?. To learn English one should learn about nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, pronouns, etc, etc. To understand it further one should rub their minds and understand synonyms, antonyms, homophones, homonyms, etc, etc. And speaking English(Gentleman Style) is not that easy as one should keep in mind the stress, vowel sounds, diphthongs, pronunciation, etc, etc. And to write English one should know their spellings, full stops, commas, hyphens, semi colons, etc, etc.
To add to already crowded recipe on English there are American people eating lays and calling them "Chips" and British people eating fries and calling them "Chips". So it is understood that It's better to understand the British and American version of the language or else thet might end up in embarrassment when asked about pants."
Now after hearing both the faces which side did you find logical? Now no need to debate over this one, just drop in your views if any.
So before going a quotation for both the sides. For teachers.
"Always remember a Pineapple is neither a pine nor an apple"
And for students.
"Before saying, 'I don't know English" don't forget to add 'yet' "